Disclaimer: See part one for details.
Notes: About Hermione's post-graduate degree, I don't see any reason why they shouldn't exist in the wizarding world like we have at universities. About the clothing thing, I believe that any society where everyone wears robes all the time would be completely unused to the notion of leather pants, and teenaged boys would be particularly stunned by said pants. If you think I'm wrong, too bad. My fic. Finally, so Snape is a little nicer than he is elsewhere. I'm going somewhere with this. Admittedly a decision I made yesterday evening but still...
*******************
Harry, Hermione and Ron cheerily walked into the great hall after dropping their things off in the Gryffindor tower. "It's great to be back," Ron said to his friends. "Do you realise that this is our last year and then we'll be done with school?"
Hermione looked at her boyfriend and sighed. "Maybe for you Ron, but if you'll recall I'm going to be taking a post-graduate degree."
"And I'll never know why 'Mione," he replied. "You already know more than the teachers do."
Before the discussion could degenrate into an argument again Harry said, "Why don't we just enjoy the feast instead of arguing about whether or not Hermione ought to get that degree." He looked up at the table and stopped dead on seeing an unfamiliar blonde girl sitting at the Gryffindor table. "Who's that?"
"Harry! Next time warn us when you're gonna stop like that," Ron said irritably. "Who's who? The new DADA professor?"
Hermione elbowed him. "I think Harry meant the girl our age sitting at the Gryffindor table."
"Well let's find out." Ron intrepidly trotted down the table and sat down next to her. "Hi, I'm Ron Weasly, that's my girlfriend Hermione Granger and that's Harry," he said pointing at his friends. "Who are you?"
The blonde smiled at him and replied, "I'm Buffy. Buffy Summers. I just joined the school to finish up the year here." By then the two H's had joined them at the table. She turned her smile on them. "I don't suppose you'd be willing to show me the ropes."
"What?" Ron asked.
Hermione sighed the sigh of the long suffering and proceeded to explain the reference to Ron while Harry handled Buffy's question. "Sorry about Ron, he's from a pureblooded wizarding family and. . ." Harry shrugged expressively.
Buffy chuckled. "That's okay. I mean, I grew up more or less muggle and I'm also from America. I'm suffering from double culture shock. Thank god my high school librarian was British or I'd never understand a word."
"To answer your question we'd be happy to er, 'show you the ropes'," Harry said. He looked at the other two and let out an expansive sigh of his own. "Someday I'll understand how those two can possibly keep from breaking up." He firmly turned his back on them. "So why are you here instead of going to a school in America?"
Suddenly the blonde's expression became guarded and she bit her lip. "I'd really rather not talk about it." Harry filed this away and watched as her expression changed from suppressed sadness to amusement. "Hey Draco!" she shouted suddenly.
The terrible trio turned to see that Malfoy had, indeed, arrived. He turned and stared at the girl, looking stunned, then stalked over. "You!" he snarled.
"Me," she replied with a still amused grin on her face. "Your father impressed by that curse you cast on him?"
The pale boy turned an interesting shade of red before retorting, "I didn't realise this school was accepting muggles as well as mudbloods now." His colour abruptly abated as though his insult drained the life out of him.
Shaking her head Buffy gave him a pitying look. "You know, I told you not to judge a book by its cover," she said to him in hammed up disappointment. Suddenly she swung her legs up onto the table revealing that under her robes she wasn't wearing her school uniform, but a pair of tight black leather pants and high heeled boots. Draco stared at the elegant lines of her legs for several seconds before shaking himself out of his daze. He stared at her as she added, "Or a witch by her clothes." He swallowed and staggered off to the Slytherin table, completely unused to clothes so revealing or the practiced nonchalance with which Buffy wore them.
She waited a moment before taking her feet off the table with the same gymnastic grace as before. "Well, hopefully that'll keep him off my case for a while," she said.
Hermione looked positively scandalised. "Why aren't you in uniform?" she asked. She glanced at the boys for support, but their brains appeared to still be melted from Buffy's display. She turned back to the other girl and looked asksance at her.
Buffy rolled her eyes at the boys and replied, "Well, we're not in class and since this is essentially leisure time I figured I'd wear the robes to fit in and my clothes for comfort."
"Those can't possibly be comfortable," Hermione said still looking a tad stunned.
Harry and Ron had finally started to reel their tongues back into their heads when Buffy said, "I wear 'em pretty often, so they're fairly well- worn." At that statement the two were lost. Luckily the Sorting Ceremony began and the table was distracted by the arrival of the new first years. When that was over the conversations centred on helping the first years cope with their first meal at the school and asking Buffy to tell them absolutely everything about herself.
"When'd you meet Malfoy?"
"Where are you from?"
"Why aren't you going to a school in America?"
"When were you Sorted?"
"What's your favourite subject?"
"Do you have a boyfriend?"
The last one came from a redhead at the end of the table who was promptly smacked by his neighbour, who hissed, "Seamus!"
Buffy laughed and said, "How about you try taking turns asking me stuff so I can actually answer questions?" There was some shuffling around the table in response to that. "So why don't you start at the far end of the table there," she pointed, "And everybody gets to ask a question going down the length of the table and back up again on the other side."
This was agreed upon and Buffy patiently answered everbody's questions. "I ran into Malfoy in Diagon Alley when I was picking up my school stuff. He accused me of being a muggle because of how I dress and tried to curse me. I got out of the way and the curse landed on some guy behind me." She frowned. "It think it was his father." This tale brought whoops of joy from the table.
Ron told her, "You are my hero forever."
Most of the other questions were fairly mundane inquiries into the habits and preferences of the newest seventh-year. The final question came up again when Seamus asked, "Do you have a boyfriend?" for the second time.
Buffy's lips tightened into a thin line and said, "I do but . . ." she trailed off and bit her lip. "I would really rather not talk about him right now." The sudden seriousness with which Buffy spoke settled the table down slightly but soon they were back to their usual boisterousness. The rest of the feast returned to more normal topics such as who was going to win the Quidditch tournament that year, which house was going to win the house cup that year and the latest item of gossip, Hermione and Ron's continuing coupledom.
Finally the party broke up for the evening and Buffy followed her housemates back to the tower. They had strewn themselves out around the common room by the time Buffy returned with her laptop and its batteries. She settled onto a couch, to be joined a moment later by Ron. "What's that?" he asked, jerking his head at the computer as it booted up.
"It's a laptop computer," Buffy told him. "My mother gave it to me as a guilt gift for sending me away to a boarding school." She frowned and moved the mouse pointer to the email icon and opened the program.
Hermione came up and stared. "But. . ." she sputtered. "But electronics don't work on Hogwarts grounds!" She stared accusitorily at Buffy. "You're using an illegally magicked muggle artifact!"
"So not!" Buffy replied. "See, the electircal things don't work here is because of all the extra magic which does this weird screw-up thing." She looked up at the other girl, "I just invented a spell to deal with that."
Stunned, Hermione gaped at her, "What sort of spell?" she finally asked.
"It's like an anti-magic field," Buffy replied. "I can take it down and put it up, but no magic can affect whatever it's cast on."
Ron looked properly sceptical as he pointed at the computer and aimed a transfiguration spell at the computer. Nothing happened and everyone stared. Buffy grinned at them and put the computer in the currently empty fireplace and aimed a jet of magical fire at it. When she let the flames die down the room was stunned to see the computer thoroughly unharmed. "Whoah," said someone in the back.
Buffy shrugged. "I mean, if you like, levitated a brick over it and then dropped it it would still crush the computer, but that's 'cause-"
"You wouldn't be using magic to damage the computer, but gravity," Hermione put in with a smile. "So you also can't levitate or affect the computer itself, but you could levitate something underneath it or call the bag it was in."
The girls shared a moment of regard, "Exactly," said Buffy.
"But what do you need a computer for?" Ron asked curiously.
Buffy plonked back down on the couch and began to fuss with her laptop again. "Well, since nearly all of my friends are muggles, they wouldn't react all that well to mail by owl, and it lets me stay in contact with my mother who is the muggles' muggle."
"Muggles' Muggle?" asked Harry.
A sigh escaped the blonde girl's lips as she said, "It's like when she sees anything to do with magic she either doesn't see that it happened or she rationalises it away." Buffy shrugged. "It's one of the reasons my parents divorced. Dad couldn't take living with someone who didn't acknowledge his being a wizard." She turned back to her computer and read from Willow that while things were pretty much normal in Sunnydale it wasn't anything they couldn't handle. Her friend had also written that neither she nor Giles had found anything to explain Buffy's dreams or that they could use to check on Angel.
Looking up, she noticed the easy camaraderie between the other members of Gryffindor house. Her eyes filled with tears as she felt a sudden surge of homesickness, Angel-missage and worry for her boyfriend. She muttered a quick excuse and hurried up to the girls' dorms for a chance to cry in peace. Within moments she had turned on her CD player and was listening to Sarah Maclachlan's mournful voice as she quietly cried into her pillow.
"Are you alright?" she heard Hermione ask, and felt the other girl's weight settle onto the bed.
Years of practice had her sitting up, using the bedclothes to subtly dry her face and facing Hermione with a smile on her face. "Sure!" she said perkily, "Why wouldn't I be fine?" The other girl just looked at her in blatant disbelief. Buffy wilted a little under that even regard. "Well I am fine." When the other didn't move Buffy finally crumpled. "It's just hard. I miss my friends and my boyfriend and just . . . home. Y'know?"
A nod from Hermione and a gentle hand on her shoulder told Buffy the other girl understood what she was saying. Then the witch left to get ready for bed. That night, as with the last two, Buffy woke up partway through the night, gasping in terror and echoes of someone else's pain. She climbed out the window and went for a run through the forest. It eased her nerves and she ran across a couple vampires to ease her feelings more. She climbed back up over the castle rooftops and made the jump back to the tower window. She didn't notice Hermione watching her as she climbed in, changed and went back to bed.
**********************
Classes began the next morning with Potions and Slytherin. As they sat down in the dungeon classroom Harry murmered, "Why exactly do we have Potions with Slytherin every damned year?"
"As our price for being the great Harry Potter's house?" Ron replied smirking.
Buffy and Hermione simply rolled their eyes and settled into their seats. Moments later Snape swept into the room and an audible gulp circled round the desks as student tensed in apprehension. All except Buffy who simply leaned back and picked her binder out of her bag and clicked open her mechanical pencil. Suddenly all eyes were on Buffy and Snape asked, "What is that Miss Summers?"
"It's called a pencil Professor Snape. I use them when I'm taking notes in class," Buffy told him calmly. A whisper went around the room again as the rest of the class was amazed by her audacity.
The teacher's eyebrow went up. "Is there some reason quill and parchment is not good enough for you?"
"Is there some reason I can't take notes on lined paper in a binder which will keep all my notes in order using a means that won't blot or spill and that I can erase if I make a mistake while writing down without having to pull out my wand for every mistake?" Buffy challenged him.
The whole class held their breath waiting for the inevitable explosion and loss of house points. Instead Snape did the unthinkable and laughed. Harry felt shocky. This girl in Gryffindor had stood up to Snape and not been slapped down. They hadn't lost any points yet and Snape, most unbelievably, was laughing. He glanced at the other students and noticed that they looked as shocked as he felt. The professor finally stopped laughing and nodded at Buffy. "Excellent point Miss Summers. As long as your notes are complete enough to allow you to succeed in my classroom I see no reason for you not to use your muggle implements. I do, however, expect you to hand in your work in the same format as the rest of the students. Now-" and he turned back to the front as he began the day's lecture.
Finally they were set to work on a potion and Ron had the chance to ask the question that had been burning in the minds of the rest of the class. "How did you know he wouldn't kill you when you pulled out that muggle stuff?" he asked.
"Because he's a teacher and Dumbledore trusts him," Buffy replied. "I've got better things to be scared of than a crummy Snidely Whiplash ripoff." Then she dropped the final ingredient into her ice potion. It spat for a moment then turned a pale shade of blue. Buffy sighed with relief. "Thank god that worked."
Snape appeared behind her. "We will see Miss Summers. Why don't you dip a flower from the vase at the front of the room into your concoction?" He gestured to his desk where a vase of daisies sat.
"Daisies?" Buffy said with a smirk on her way to the front. "How mundane." She grinned at the teacher and watched her fellow students look petrified. Buffy pulled her wand out and transformed the flower into a spray of deadly nightshade then dipped it into the potion. It came out a perfect ice sculpture of the flowers. They promptly started to melt and Buffy frowned at them. She reached over to the open cupboard and snagged a sprig of mint, dropped it into the potion and redipped her flower. She smiled at Snape and pinned it to her hair.
He raised an eyebrow at her ingenuity and said, "Excellent work Miss Summers. Ten points to Gryffindor." A gasp swept around the room. A Gryffindor had just achieved the impossible, points awarded to the house from Snape. Then he turned around and impartially glared around the room. "If the rest of you can do nearly as well as Miss Summers I will be very impressed." He started to the front of the room, glanced around and added, "Oh yes, five points deducted from Gryffindor for showing off."
The rest of the day was significantly less eventful, but at lunch Buffy was deluged by students from every house demanding to know how she had bewitched Snape and if she could teach them how to do it as well. Buffy just rolled her eyes. "What is with you people? He's just a teacher. He's not going to like, kill you or anything."
"But he hates Gryffindors and never gives us any points. Just deducts them. You actually managed to get five points from Snape," Harry said, trying to explain the insanity of it all.
Buffy made a face at him. "So our stupid teacher-invented clique now has five more points than before. So what?"
Hermione and Harry both paused and looked thoughtful at that comment, but Ron felt no compunction about waving his hands wildly as he squawked, "So the house cup is really important and I want to win!"
"Why?"
Ron blinked at her. "Why what?"
"Why is it so important that you win this competition? It pits you against some perfectly nice people in the other houses, it means that everybody is punished if one person is a screw-up and everyone in a house is rewarded even if they're all bastards just because one person in that house is good at collecting points." The blonde looked at him inquiringly clearly waiting for a reply.
Ron struggled for a moment then said, "Well it's like real life y'know? One person goes down and everybody goes down with them."
Her eyes suddenly looked far older than they had a right to be and Ron looked at Harry who sometimes looked just the same. "When it come down to it, no friends, no family, all you've got is you," Buffy told him softly.
"And when does it come down to that?" Ron demanded. He felt uncomfortable, but had to ask.
"Every time," Harry and Buffy whispered in unison, their voices carrying despite the din in the hall.
TBC...
Notes: About Hermione's post-graduate degree, I don't see any reason why they shouldn't exist in the wizarding world like we have at universities. About the clothing thing, I believe that any society where everyone wears robes all the time would be completely unused to the notion of leather pants, and teenaged boys would be particularly stunned by said pants. If you think I'm wrong, too bad. My fic. Finally, so Snape is a little nicer than he is elsewhere. I'm going somewhere with this. Admittedly a decision I made yesterday evening but still...
*******************
Harry, Hermione and Ron cheerily walked into the great hall after dropping their things off in the Gryffindor tower. "It's great to be back," Ron said to his friends. "Do you realise that this is our last year and then we'll be done with school?"
Hermione looked at her boyfriend and sighed. "Maybe for you Ron, but if you'll recall I'm going to be taking a post-graduate degree."
"And I'll never know why 'Mione," he replied. "You already know more than the teachers do."
Before the discussion could degenrate into an argument again Harry said, "Why don't we just enjoy the feast instead of arguing about whether or not Hermione ought to get that degree." He looked up at the table and stopped dead on seeing an unfamiliar blonde girl sitting at the Gryffindor table. "Who's that?"
"Harry! Next time warn us when you're gonna stop like that," Ron said irritably. "Who's who? The new DADA professor?"
Hermione elbowed him. "I think Harry meant the girl our age sitting at the Gryffindor table."
"Well let's find out." Ron intrepidly trotted down the table and sat down next to her. "Hi, I'm Ron Weasly, that's my girlfriend Hermione Granger and that's Harry," he said pointing at his friends. "Who are you?"
The blonde smiled at him and replied, "I'm Buffy. Buffy Summers. I just joined the school to finish up the year here." By then the two H's had joined them at the table. She turned her smile on them. "I don't suppose you'd be willing to show me the ropes."
"What?" Ron asked.
Hermione sighed the sigh of the long suffering and proceeded to explain the reference to Ron while Harry handled Buffy's question. "Sorry about Ron, he's from a pureblooded wizarding family and. . ." Harry shrugged expressively.
Buffy chuckled. "That's okay. I mean, I grew up more or less muggle and I'm also from America. I'm suffering from double culture shock. Thank god my high school librarian was British or I'd never understand a word."
"To answer your question we'd be happy to er, 'show you the ropes'," Harry said. He looked at the other two and let out an expansive sigh of his own. "Someday I'll understand how those two can possibly keep from breaking up." He firmly turned his back on them. "So why are you here instead of going to a school in America?"
Suddenly the blonde's expression became guarded and she bit her lip. "I'd really rather not talk about it." Harry filed this away and watched as her expression changed from suppressed sadness to amusement. "Hey Draco!" she shouted suddenly.
The terrible trio turned to see that Malfoy had, indeed, arrived. He turned and stared at the girl, looking stunned, then stalked over. "You!" he snarled.
"Me," she replied with a still amused grin on her face. "Your father impressed by that curse you cast on him?"
The pale boy turned an interesting shade of red before retorting, "I didn't realise this school was accepting muggles as well as mudbloods now." His colour abruptly abated as though his insult drained the life out of him.
Shaking her head Buffy gave him a pitying look. "You know, I told you not to judge a book by its cover," she said to him in hammed up disappointment. Suddenly she swung her legs up onto the table revealing that under her robes she wasn't wearing her school uniform, but a pair of tight black leather pants and high heeled boots. Draco stared at the elegant lines of her legs for several seconds before shaking himself out of his daze. He stared at her as she added, "Or a witch by her clothes." He swallowed and staggered off to the Slytherin table, completely unused to clothes so revealing or the practiced nonchalance with which Buffy wore them.
She waited a moment before taking her feet off the table with the same gymnastic grace as before. "Well, hopefully that'll keep him off my case for a while," she said.
Hermione looked positively scandalised. "Why aren't you in uniform?" she asked. She glanced at the boys for support, but their brains appeared to still be melted from Buffy's display. She turned back to the other girl and looked asksance at her.
Buffy rolled her eyes at the boys and replied, "Well, we're not in class and since this is essentially leisure time I figured I'd wear the robes to fit in and my clothes for comfort."
"Those can't possibly be comfortable," Hermione said still looking a tad stunned.
Harry and Ron had finally started to reel their tongues back into their heads when Buffy said, "I wear 'em pretty often, so they're fairly well- worn." At that statement the two were lost. Luckily the Sorting Ceremony began and the table was distracted by the arrival of the new first years. When that was over the conversations centred on helping the first years cope with their first meal at the school and asking Buffy to tell them absolutely everything about herself.
"When'd you meet Malfoy?"
"Where are you from?"
"Why aren't you going to a school in America?"
"When were you Sorted?"
"What's your favourite subject?"
"Do you have a boyfriend?"
The last one came from a redhead at the end of the table who was promptly smacked by his neighbour, who hissed, "Seamus!"
Buffy laughed and said, "How about you try taking turns asking me stuff so I can actually answer questions?" There was some shuffling around the table in response to that. "So why don't you start at the far end of the table there," she pointed, "And everybody gets to ask a question going down the length of the table and back up again on the other side."
This was agreed upon and Buffy patiently answered everbody's questions. "I ran into Malfoy in Diagon Alley when I was picking up my school stuff. He accused me of being a muggle because of how I dress and tried to curse me. I got out of the way and the curse landed on some guy behind me." She frowned. "It think it was his father." This tale brought whoops of joy from the table.
Ron told her, "You are my hero forever."
Most of the other questions were fairly mundane inquiries into the habits and preferences of the newest seventh-year. The final question came up again when Seamus asked, "Do you have a boyfriend?" for the second time.
Buffy's lips tightened into a thin line and said, "I do but . . ." she trailed off and bit her lip. "I would really rather not talk about him right now." The sudden seriousness with which Buffy spoke settled the table down slightly but soon they were back to their usual boisterousness. The rest of the feast returned to more normal topics such as who was going to win the Quidditch tournament that year, which house was going to win the house cup that year and the latest item of gossip, Hermione and Ron's continuing coupledom.
Finally the party broke up for the evening and Buffy followed her housemates back to the tower. They had strewn themselves out around the common room by the time Buffy returned with her laptop and its batteries. She settled onto a couch, to be joined a moment later by Ron. "What's that?" he asked, jerking his head at the computer as it booted up.
"It's a laptop computer," Buffy told him. "My mother gave it to me as a guilt gift for sending me away to a boarding school." She frowned and moved the mouse pointer to the email icon and opened the program.
Hermione came up and stared. "But. . ." she sputtered. "But electronics don't work on Hogwarts grounds!" She stared accusitorily at Buffy. "You're using an illegally magicked muggle artifact!"
"So not!" Buffy replied. "See, the electircal things don't work here is because of all the extra magic which does this weird screw-up thing." She looked up at the other girl, "I just invented a spell to deal with that."
Stunned, Hermione gaped at her, "What sort of spell?" she finally asked.
"It's like an anti-magic field," Buffy replied. "I can take it down and put it up, but no magic can affect whatever it's cast on."
Ron looked properly sceptical as he pointed at the computer and aimed a transfiguration spell at the computer. Nothing happened and everyone stared. Buffy grinned at them and put the computer in the currently empty fireplace and aimed a jet of magical fire at it. When she let the flames die down the room was stunned to see the computer thoroughly unharmed. "Whoah," said someone in the back.
Buffy shrugged. "I mean, if you like, levitated a brick over it and then dropped it it would still crush the computer, but that's 'cause-"
"You wouldn't be using magic to damage the computer, but gravity," Hermione put in with a smile. "So you also can't levitate or affect the computer itself, but you could levitate something underneath it or call the bag it was in."
The girls shared a moment of regard, "Exactly," said Buffy.
"But what do you need a computer for?" Ron asked curiously.
Buffy plonked back down on the couch and began to fuss with her laptop again. "Well, since nearly all of my friends are muggles, they wouldn't react all that well to mail by owl, and it lets me stay in contact with my mother who is the muggles' muggle."
"Muggles' Muggle?" asked Harry.
A sigh escaped the blonde girl's lips as she said, "It's like when she sees anything to do with magic she either doesn't see that it happened or she rationalises it away." Buffy shrugged. "It's one of the reasons my parents divorced. Dad couldn't take living with someone who didn't acknowledge his being a wizard." She turned back to her computer and read from Willow that while things were pretty much normal in Sunnydale it wasn't anything they couldn't handle. Her friend had also written that neither she nor Giles had found anything to explain Buffy's dreams or that they could use to check on Angel.
Looking up, she noticed the easy camaraderie between the other members of Gryffindor house. Her eyes filled with tears as she felt a sudden surge of homesickness, Angel-missage and worry for her boyfriend. She muttered a quick excuse and hurried up to the girls' dorms for a chance to cry in peace. Within moments she had turned on her CD player and was listening to Sarah Maclachlan's mournful voice as she quietly cried into her pillow.
"Are you alright?" she heard Hermione ask, and felt the other girl's weight settle onto the bed.
Years of practice had her sitting up, using the bedclothes to subtly dry her face and facing Hermione with a smile on her face. "Sure!" she said perkily, "Why wouldn't I be fine?" The other girl just looked at her in blatant disbelief. Buffy wilted a little under that even regard. "Well I am fine." When the other didn't move Buffy finally crumpled. "It's just hard. I miss my friends and my boyfriend and just . . . home. Y'know?"
A nod from Hermione and a gentle hand on her shoulder told Buffy the other girl understood what she was saying. Then the witch left to get ready for bed. That night, as with the last two, Buffy woke up partway through the night, gasping in terror and echoes of someone else's pain. She climbed out the window and went for a run through the forest. It eased her nerves and she ran across a couple vampires to ease her feelings more. She climbed back up over the castle rooftops and made the jump back to the tower window. She didn't notice Hermione watching her as she climbed in, changed and went back to bed.
**********************
Classes began the next morning with Potions and Slytherin. As they sat down in the dungeon classroom Harry murmered, "Why exactly do we have Potions with Slytherin every damned year?"
"As our price for being the great Harry Potter's house?" Ron replied smirking.
Buffy and Hermione simply rolled their eyes and settled into their seats. Moments later Snape swept into the room and an audible gulp circled round the desks as student tensed in apprehension. All except Buffy who simply leaned back and picked her binder out of her bag and clicked open her mechanical pencil. Suddenly all eyes were on Buffy and Snape asked, "What is that Miss Summers?"
"It's called a pencil Professor Snape. I use them when I'm taking notes in class," Buffy told him calmly. A whisper went around the room again as the rest of the class was amazed by her audacity.
The teacher's eyebrow went up. "Is there some reason quill and parchment is not good enough for you?"
"Is there some reason I can't take notes on lined paper in a binder which will keep all my notes in order using a means that won't blot or spill and that I can erase if I make a mistake while writing down without having to pull out my wand for every mistake?" Buffy challenged him.
The whole class held their breath waiting for the inevitable explosion and loss of house points. Instead Snape did the unthinkable and laughed. Harry felt shocky. This girl in Gryffindor had stood up to Snape and not been slapped down. They hadn't lost any points yet and Snape, most unbelievably, was laughing. He glanced at the other students and noticed that they looked as shocked as he felt. The professor finally stopped laughing and nodded at Buffy. "Excellent point Miss Summers. As long as your notes are complete enough to allow you to succeed in my classroom I see no reason for you not to use your muggle implements. I do, however, expect you to hand in your work in the same format as the rest of the students. Now-" and he turned back to the front as he began the day's lecture.
Finally they were set to work on a potion and Ron had the chance to ask the question that had been burning in the minds of the rest of the class. "How did you know he wouldn't kill you when you pulled out that muggle stuff?" he asked.
"Because he's a teacher and Dumbledore trusts him," Buffy replied. "I've got better things to be scared of than a crummy Snidely Whiplash ripoff." Then she dropped the final ingredient into her ice potion. It spat for a moment then turned a pale shade of blue. Buffy sighed with relief. "Thank god that worked."
Snape appeared behind her. "We will see Miss Summers. Why don't you dip a flower from the vase at the front of the room into your concoction?" He gestured to his desk where a vase of daisies sat.
"Daisies?" Buffy said with a smirk on her way to the front. "How mundane." She grinned at the teacher and watched her fellow students look petrified. Buffy pulled her wand out and transformed the flower into a spray of deadly nightshade then dipped it into the potion. It came out a perfect ice sculpture of the flowers. They promptly started to melt and Buffy frowned at them. She reached over to the open cupboard and snagged a sprig of mint, dropped it into the potion and redipped her flower. She smiled at Snape and pinned it to her hair.
He raised an eyebrow at her ingenuity and said, "Excellent work Miss Summers. Ten points to Gryffindor." A gasp swept around the room. A Gryffindor had just achieved the impossible, points awarded to the house from Snape. Then he turned around and impartially glared around the room. "If the rest of you can do nearly as well as Miss Summers I will be very impressed." He started to the front of the room, glanced around and added, "Oh yes, five points deducted from Gryffindor for showing off."
The rest of the day was significantly less eventful, but at lunch Buffy was deluged by students from every house demanding to know how she had bewitched Snape and if she could teach them how to do it as well. Buffy just rolled her eyes. "What is with you people? He's just a teacher. He's not going to like, kill you or anything."
"But he hates Gryffindors and never gives us any points. Just deducts them. You actually managed to get five points from Snape," Harry said, trying to explain the insanity of it all.
Buffy made a face at him. "So our stupid teacher-invented clique now has five more points than before. So what?"
Hermione and Harry both paused and looked thoughtful at that comment, but Ron felt no compunction about waving his hands wildly as he squawked, "So the house cup is really important and I want to win!"
"Why?"
Ron blinked at her. "Why what?"
"Why is it so important that you win this competition? It pits you against some perfectly nice people in the other houses, it means that everybody is punished if one person is a screw-up and everyone in a house is rewarded even if they're all bastards just because one person in that house is good at collecting points." The blonde looked at him inquiringly clearly waiting for a reply.
Ron struggled for a moment then said, "Well it's like real life y'know? One person goes down and everybody goes down with them."
Her eyes suddenly looked far older than they had a right to be and Ron looked at Harry who sometimes looked just the same. "When it come down to it, no friends, no family, all you've got is you," Buffy told him softly.
"And when does it come down to that?" Ron demanded. He felt uncomfortable, but had to ask.
"Every time," Harry and Buffy whispered in unison, their voices carrying despite the din in the hall.
TBC...